by Laura Marney
‘Do we have spades?’
‘Yeah,’ said Chloe, engrossed in the movie, pointing distractedly to another polythene bag. I reached over and pulled it towards me. Inside were two bright yellow kiddies’ beach spades. I didn’t say anything. We were at an important scene in the film.
Because it had been such a hot cloudless day it took a long time to get dark. We were halfway through the next movie when Chloe decided it was time to go.
‘Oh, let’s wait until this one’s finished,’ I moaned. ‘Or even better, we could get up early, say five or six, set the alarm clock, and do it in the morning.’
‘Set the alarm clock?’ said Chloe, incredulous.
‘Yeah, I know it’s a new concept but we’d have the advantage of it being light.’
‘And the disadvantage of witnesses. I don’t think it’s legal to bury dogs in public parks. Why do I feel you’re not with me on this, Alison?’
‘I am, but…’
‘Well, come on then. Look, you can borrow this skirt and wear it with my black Versace top.’
‘What are you wearing?’
‘Black Versace dress.’
‘So, let me get this straight: we’re taking all this stuff to the park, the candles, the shells, the enormous rose bush…’
‘And Fanny,’ Chloe interjected.
‘And Fanny. We’re sneaking into the park in the dead of night and digging a hole with plastic spades, and, and,’ I stopped to make sure she was following, ‘we’re doing it in Versace.’
‘Versace widow’s weeds. Pretty cool, huh?’
‘Can we do it tomorrow? Please?’
‘No, we do it now. I’m sick of that rotting corpse on my terrace. There’s all kinds of gases and shit building up there, if we leave it any longer the thing’s gonna explode.’
‘Honestly Chloe, I don’t feel very well, I’ve eaten too much.’
‘Barf then.’
‘I can’t, I’ve never made myself sick, I wouldn’t know how.’
‘It’s easy. Put your toothbrush down your throat, I’ll show you. I’ll do it for you if you want.’
‘Thanks,’ I said sarcastically. ‘You’re a real pal.’
She was serious. Chloe went immediately to the bathroom and came back with my toothbrush.
‘No, I can’t. Even the idea of it makes me feel sick. Anyway, that way lies bulimia. I don’t want to end up like you.’
‘Hey!’ said Chloe and rushed out the room again. She came back with the foil packet of pills. ‘Eca stacks! A few of these babies’ll burn it off real quick.’ Chloe popped a handful out of the foil, necked them and swigged from her Coke can ‘Here you go.’
She passed me four tablets and I studied them in my hand. Taking these had to be better than sicking up. They hadn’t done Lisa and Lauren any harm. While Chloe changed into her black dress I swallowed the pills one by one and watched the movie to the end. She came back in her tight black Versace number, chopping coke on her wee vanity mirror.
‘This’ll get you up and at ‘em,’ she said, passing me the line she’d chopped.
I didn’t think so. The sore head I’d had all day was still a background thud in my brain. The rubbish I’d stuffed myself with was nice at the time but the sugar rush had passed. Now I only felt the Versace skirt uncomfortably tight and my belly full of gas. As I held the plastic straw to my nose and inhaled, I felt the familiar tingle I loved so much. My lungs opened and my body felt light and strong. I could do anything.
If I went to California, I’d have a wonderful time with Chloe. I’d see a doctor and get my glandular fever checked over. They had great doctors in America. I’d explain to Chloe that I had to stop taking drugs, just until I’d recovered. She’d understand.
If I decided to go back to Scotland, I’d pack my bag and sneak out tomorrow morning while she was sleeping. I’d send back every centimo I owed her. She’d be cool about me taking it, she’d understand. We’d still be friends.
Whatever I did, it was going to be okay. Chloe wasn’t going to find out about the money. My vital organs weren’t going to pack up. Everything was going to be okay.
Chapter 35
We took a taxi to the park, we had to, there was too much stuff to carry.
‘You’re carrying the dog,’ said Chloe.
‘No, I’m not,’ I countered, ‘you’re the one who wants the fancy funeral.’
‘Hey, you’re the one who killed it.’
I carried it. I sneaked the body off the terrace while Juegita was snoozing under the bed. She’d lost interest by now anyway. She had the other pups to take care of, life went on, but she still wasn’t speaking to me.
I had to sit with the body on my knee in the taxi. It wasn’t heavy but it was totally unpleasant. It felt squidgy. Some sort of fluid had leaked out and got between the polythene layers.
The taxi dropped us at the side of the park near the railway station.
‘Oh, that’s a shame, the gates are locked,’ I said, relieved.
Now we could go home and Chloe could call her mum and while she was on the phone I could secretly pack. But Chloe wasn’t giving up that easily. She knew a place where we could climb the fence. We walked around the perimeter for fifteen minutes through the heat of the night air.
‘This is it,’ she whispered.
‘But it’s the same height here as it is round the front,’ I complained, ‘we’ve walked all that way for nothing.’
‘Yeah, but no one can see us here,’ she whispered. Chloe laid down her black binbag full of stuff and clasped her fingers to make a basket. ‘Okay, I’ll give you a leg up.’
‘Why do I have to go first?’ I moaned.
‘Jeez, Alison, what’s with the attitude?’ said Chloe, no longer whispering. ‘You’re smaller than me and I can give you a hand up from this side, that’s all. Stop being so paranoid!’
‘Sorry,’ I said, laying down my bag of dead dog in preparation.
‘Forget it,’ said Chloe and, nimble as Spider Man’s girlfriend, scaled the fence. From the other side she issued the next instructions.
‘Okay, climb up and drop me down the stuff.’
It would have made more sense for me to go first but it was too late. Now I had to clamber unassisted up the fence. I could only hold on with one hand, my hand slippery with sweat. My other hand held her poly bag, which I was to lift over the fence and drop down to her. The bag was heavy.
‘We’ll have to do it a piece at a time,’ said Chloe.
Getting the rose bush, the wooden box and the dog’s body over the fence was hard work and tricky.
‘Are you ready?’ I asked.
‘Yes!’ she hissed impatiently.
She caught the rose bush and the box but she wasn’t ready, or she was too squeamish, for the last one.
‘Eeuuw!’ she squealed as she let Fanny splatter to the ground.
I prayed the bag hadn’t burst.
Eventually I hauled myself over the fence and we trudged towards the lake. When we passed through a well-lit area Chloe insisted that we run and creep in and out of the shadows. It was too hot for running.
As we came past the sculpture of the hairy mammoth I spotted a hole in the fence and pointed it out to Chloe. All that fence-climbing, bag-throwing and corpse-splitting was for nothing, we could’ve crawled through the fence right here.
‘But this is more fun,’ she giggled, like Mission Impossible.’
I smiled, too exhausted to giggle.
‘The rose bush won’t take the heat,’ said Chloe, ‘We’ll have to plant it in the shade. Those big trees over there, nice spot, huh?’
I didn’t answer.
‘Lemme see, the rose needs to go down two and a half feet and the casket is eighteen inches deep. It goes underneath. We need space between them, something for the roots to cling to. Also a wild animal might dig it all up if it’s not deep enough. That wouldn’t be good. It’d kill the rose bush.’
The first hole we dug, we got down about three feet before we hit t
he tree roots. It wasn’t easy. The plastic kiddies’ spades were probably excellent for shifting sand but they were hopeless for hacking through sunbaked earth.
I was sweating heavily into Chloe’s Versace top. I hadn’t known a hotter night in Barcelona. Wet patches weren’t so obvious on black, at least until the sweat dried and showed up white salt rings underneath the arm holes.
‘It’s no use, Chloe, there’s tree roots everywhere here. We’d be better off out on the grass.’
Chloe pulled her chin in. ‘It has to be here, for the rose. It’s a symbol, of Fanny’s life, of her not having died in vain, her little body nurturing new life in the form of those tiny roses. It needs to be here.’
Her bottom lip was starting to wobble.
‘Okay, let’s try in the middle, furthest away from any of the trees. There should be fewer roots there.’
‘Thank you, Alison. I love that you understand what I’m trying to do.’
My heart was pounding and my head was bursting. It wasn’t like Chloe wasn’t working, she was doing her fair share of the digging, more if I was honest, but she didn’t seem to find it as hard work as I did. My breathing was becoming laboured.
‘Are you okay, Alison? You look like shit.’
Chloe sounded genuinely concerned. I took a break from digging to answer her.
‘I think it’s indigestion, I shouldn’t have eaten all that crap.’
‘Is indigestion meant to make you sweat like that? Come on honey, sit down, take a break, you don’t look so good.’
Sweat was dripping into my eyes. Despite the sweating I felt cold. I noticed that I’d begun to shiver. My heart was pounding in my ears and I felt a restrictive tightness across my chest. Everybody knew what chest tightness meant. As I lifted my head I was overwhelmed by a dizzy turn and felt myself fall forward, into the freshly dug grave.
He was driving when it happened. A heart attack, a small one, not fatal, but enough to make him crash. He felt it coming, gasped and clutched at his chest and then flopped unconscious over the steering wheel. He was a hazard, a menace on the road. For perhaps a minute the car continued on a straight path with him lolled over the wheel. It didn’t lose speed but increased as it careened down the hill. Then the road curved. The car crashed through the barriers and down the embankment. The first thing it hit was an oak tree. The tree had been there a long time and didn’t take kindly to being so roughly jostled by the runaway car. By way of protest the tree punched its branches through the windshield and knocked the little car sideways. This caused the car to flip over and plough upside down through a nursery of baby trees. It stopped, still upside down, thirty feet below, at the bottom of the gully. It didn’t burst into flames. It lay there smoking and cooling in the freezing night air.
He was not dead. He’d been so angry when he got in the car that he hadn’t put his seat belt on. He was thrown around the inside of the car and seriously injured but he landed on something warm and soft. He lay unconscious for twenty minutes, though it seemed much longer, but he was alive. It was extremely cold and another fifteen minutes before the fire brigade would reach this remote spot. The cold woke him. He tried to move and moaned in pain when he found he could not. He cried thick tears. He cried and prayed. He asked forgiveness and that his secret would be kept. A dying wish. With a clearer understanding of his situation he became aware that, as well as his other problems, he had something in his eye. It was the shock of this that made his heart stop for the third and final time.
Chapter 36
I was scared, pissed off and depressed all at the same time. I was about to die. This was so unfair. I hadn’t wanted to go to hospital, I’d had enough of hospitals for one lifetime. I knew exactly how deathly dull they were.
I told Chloe I wanted to sit under the tree and close my eyes for a while. I thought that if I could just lie still for a while, the sweats and chest tightness would pass. Then I’d get up, shake her warmly by the hand and catch my flight back to Scotland.
‘Just keep breathing,’ said Chloe.
What frightened me was her reaction. That time I lay on the terrace gasping for my last breath she hardly blinked. Now she couldn’t keep her eyes off me, watching me breathe in, watching me breathe out. She spoke slowly and carefully as if I was an idiot, as if having a heart attack had made me mentally deficient. Educationally subnormal.
The taxi dropped us at the wrong door and, despite Chloe throwing a tantrum, the staff made us walk out and round the side of the building to the Accident and Emergency department. In Hospital del Mar a heart attack, even in someone my age, impressed nobody. We had to stand in a queue at a wee glass window. The boy in front of us had blood running down his neck and was nursing what looked to be a broken arm. He was a biker, obvious by his leather jacket and boots, and waited his turn in silence, probably in shock.
When we got to the window Chloe blurted it all out in a rush of Spanish and the nurse made her say it again, bit by bit. I understood very little but it was better I stayed out of it. That way I wouldn’t say the wrong thing and drop us in it when they asked awkward questions about drugs. The nurse directed us to a cubicle with a trolley bed in it. I was grateful to get out of the queue and lie down. I was still sweating a lot but I was grateful for the blanket Chloe pulled over me. Once I lay down the dizziness came back and I passed out a few times, for seconds at a time.
We were in the cubicle a while. Nobody came. I knew this would happen, hospital was always like this.
‘Chloe?’
‘Shhh Alison, don’t try to speak. I’m right here.’
‘I know you are, I haven’t gone blind.’
‘Everything’s going to be okay.’
‘Chloe, can you do me a favour please?’
‘Of course.’
‘Can you phone Ewan?’
Chloe looked incredulous, ‘Ewan?’
‘Here, his number’s on my phone.’
I held out my phone to her with my hand shaking.
‘I can’t, honey,’ she said sadly, ‘not in a hospital, it interferes with the equipment. I’d have to go outside.’
She said this as if it was a reason not to.
‘Then would you go out and call him for me?’
‘I don’t want to leave you.’
‘Chloe, please. I’m fine here.’
She wasn’t keen to go; obviously scared she’d miss something. I didn’t want to die alone while she was outside making the call but at the same time I didn’t want to die without someone from home. I wanted my mum; I wanted Charlie and the twins but they were miles away. Ewan was here. He was from Cumbernauld, a family friend, a witness. He would make the arrangements.
Chloe gave me a long sulky look. She swiped the phone out of my hand and flounced out. I concentrated on keeping breathing.
I don’t know how long she was gone. Time seemed to be slowing down and speeding up and it was difficult to keep track. I lay quietly in my cubicle, screened from view and from the action, but I heard everything. I didn’t understand the words, I didn’t have to. I understood the embarrassed mumblings, frightened shouts, the soft or noisy grief, the bored workaday voices of the staff. People were dying here.
People walked or ran past my cubicle making the curtain gently billow. I was still here. If I died, I wouldn’t die alone. I was surrounded. We’d abandoned poor Fanny and all the gubbins. It would’ve been interesting to see what the park keepers made of it in the morning: the grave, the box and the rosebush, the candles and the putrefying puppy. They’d probably think it was some kind of devil-worshipping cult. But, unless my departing spirit happened to fly over it, I’d never know. If I died now, I’d never know anything again. Never work for Señor Valero, never learn Spanish, never have the quintessential Barcelona experience, or any experiences.
I thought of Isabelle, my old next-door neighbour, and wondered where she was now, if she was still attending spiritualist meetings and receiving messages from her husband. I wondered if she ever received m
essages from my dad. Every time I came close to death I thought about meeting my dad on the other side and how unbearable it was going to be. He was the only person I knew there.
A nurse came to me at last. She spoke and when I didn’t answer she gave an exaggerated comedy shrug and said ‘Ingles!’ as if to say, what can you do? She carried on speaking to me in Catalan while she took my blood pressure. Then she stuck wee round plastic things on my chest and took a print-out from the machine they were attached to. I tried not to look at her, concentrating on my heart rate, but she didn’t even notice, keeping up her professional smiling and chatting. This insincere chatter distressed me. I was dying, I had more important things to worry about, but the fact that I couldn’t understand her made me feel scared, out of control. I had to focus on keeping my heart ticking.
The nurse took the things off my chest. As she was packing up the machine Chloe came back.
‘Thanks for coming back, Chloe, I was scared.’
Chloe ignored me and began interrogating the nurse. The nurse appeared vague, out of her depth and whatever replies she gave seemed to only annoy Chloe. The nurse moved quicker now, folding away equipment, dismissing Chloe’s next round of questions with quick negative replies. She had stopped chatting and smiling.
‘You have insurance, right?’ Chloe asked me, her face inches from mine.
‘I think so.’ I replied lamely.
‘You think so?’
‘Well I’m an EU citizen, I should be covered.’
Chloe turned her attention back to the nurse and she was now shouting and rummaging in her bag until she produced her Visa card, the platinum one. There was another quick exchange and the nurse was gone.
‘Chloe, what’s going on? The nurse took a print-out from that machine, what did she tell you?’
‘They need to do more tests, decide if they need to operate.’
‘Operate?’
‘Don’t worry, I promise I won’t leave you again.’
‘Did you speak to Ewan?’
As if apologetic, Chloe shook her head and bit her lip.
‘Chloe, you have to, I need to…’